Yesterday, I noticed that my own riding, Parkdale–High Park
was above the 75th percentile in SuperRiding scores. But when it came to
the cold, hard cash element, P-HP was behind.

Then there was Mitt Romney's line from the debates last year; how young people "... can't find a job commensurate with their education." If 20-somethings here are over-educated for today's economy, how are the other Ontario ridings faring?

Alms for those with advanced degrees?

Below, we've posted a breakdown of the figures that led to my SuperRidings score from yesterday. We've also added a new column, the Over-Educated Score, and then weighted it by the figure for Median Family Income. A positive number suggests income lagging behind education. A negative number suggests the opposite — perhaps large numbers of baby boomers who got their diploma stamped by the mill in the 1970s, and were rewarded by an easy labour market?

Data is for the Rest of Ontario only (No Northern Ridings).

Edit: A new method was used to compute these scores. It consisted
of first finding the percent score within a given riding (e.g.
converting a score of 50,000 people within a riding twice that size to
50% of a riding). Then computing a standard score, based on the percent
scores. Then weighting the standard scores by the population of the
riding, by dividing the standard scores by the following: (Population of
the riding / Average population of ridings).

Figures are based on the 2006 census, and are given for the Rest of
Ontario only (i.e. Not the 11 Northern Ridings). The original figures
given are found below.

Certain social critics might also take perverse pleasure in noting that Trinity-Spadina (Toronto's Annex, Trinity Bellwoods Park, Ossington Avenue, etc) is number 2

In Rob Ford's imagination, there are probably
more than a few of these in Trinity-Spadina

Under a stricter set of criteria, that is, searching for truly "over-educated" ridings consisting of lots of educated people making very little money (standard scores over zero for education, and less than zero for income), come out with this exclusive list : Toronto Centre, Trinity-Spadina, Don Valley East, Scarborough-Agincourt, Parkdale-High Park, Willowdale, York Centre, Toronto-Danforth, Ottawa-Vanier, Mississauga East-Cooksville, Beaches-East York, Ottawa West-Nepean, London North Centre, Markham-Unionville, followed by Kingston and the Islands.

Since the figures are from 2006, maybe the trends would be even more extreme if we had reliable 2011 census numbers.

Brains, Paupers, and the Party Vote

The NDP seems disproportionately represented at the top of the pile here, though they are sprinkled throughout the list, winning ridings all the way down to "under-educated" Essex.

Conversely, the PCs show up pretty often at the bottom, while maxing out at Thornhill, a third of the way down from the top. Is there something going on here?

We decided to check, so we assigned codes to the 2011 Ontario Election winners and looked for any correlations between Party Winner and all our various measures:

Correlations

r

Education and Party Winner

-0.30 *** ( p = 0.003 )

Income and Party Winner

-0.08

Over-Educated Score and Party Winner

-0.21 ** (p = 0.04)

The strongest correlation we found was not with any of the fanciful
scores invented here, but actually just plain old education. The next-highest? The over-educated score.

Something
interesting for the parties to keep in mind: 2006 family median income
apparently had no significant correlation to 2011 party vote at all.

Of course, we would have to reword that for the statisticians: the null
hypothesis, where income has no relationship to party vote, cannot be
rejected.

But this goes to show you why you should check your figures with some kind of statistical test before jumping to too-hasty a conclusion.

A Nice Note

We have to point out, of course, that "Educated" (% BAs) isn't conterminous with training or seriousness (sorry to burst your bubble, Trinity Bellwoods Park hipsters).

One likely source of income disproportionate to the number of BAs found in a riding are the skilled trades.

Case in point: the roommate at our house who brings home all the money is in wood-working.

Original tables:

Here is the old data from 3 Feb 2013, using a slightly less sophisticated (we think now) method: